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What’s happening
Bad actors are making unauthorized changes to attorney information using Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) withdrawal and revocation of attorney forms by:
- Signing the attorney of record’s name
- Resetting the correspondence address to the applicant’s address in the initial application
- Replacing the primary correspondence email address with the bad actor’s email address or deleting the email address
What we’ll do
When we receive a request to change the primary email correspondence address of record, we’ll send an email to the prior primary email correspondence address to alert the attorney. Look for an email message from TEAS@uspto.gov with the subject line "Alert USPTO Change of Email Address" notifying you of changes to the primary email correspondence address in your cases.
What you should do
Keep contact info updated
Bad actors appear primarily to be targeting registrations that don’t include a correspondence email address. You won’t receive a change of address alert if you don’t have a correspondence email address on record. Avoid this problem by ensuring that your registrations contain current contact information.
Future plans
We’re implementing a login requirement this fall to combat this problem.
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